A Compassionate Communities Approach in a Grief and Bereavement Support Program: Bridging the Gap in Palliative Care

Abstract

Grief and bereavement support is a fundamental component of palliative care, yet there is a gap in practice as not all palliative care services offer it. The compassionate communities (CC) approach aims to build community capacity to address grief as grief support is considered everyone's responsibility. This study describes the characteristics, development, growth and attendees of a grief support program that uses a CC approach to bridge the gap of grief support in palliative care.

Keywords:

• Bereavement
• compassionate communities
• grief
• program
• psychoeducation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Lupita López Nieto and her team of the Grupo de Apoyo Tanatológico A.C. and Alfonso García Hernández and Sara Darias Curvo from the Universidad de La Laguna for their mentorship.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.